It’s distressing to see Cardinal O’Malley acting so callously toward hundreds of wounded Irish clergy sex abuse victims and thousands of betrayed Irish Catholic parishioners who have been hurt by the actions and inactions of two complicit Irish bishops.

There’s no law that mandates O’Mahony and Walsh sharing the altar with O’Malley. O’Malley could easily have insisted that these two controversial and corrupt clerics step aside for this event. But O’Malley did what so many Catholic officials have done for so long: he put the comfort of his colleagues above the healing of victims.

This isn’t complicated. If you want or claim to be help abuse victims, then don’t honor those who enabled the abuse.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 22 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)